Keith in Laguna Beach -- Sunday, 23Aug2015

I took a chance that since the Tommies weren't there on Saturday, they wouldn't be there on Sunday either, and the bet paid off. And it actually turned out to be a better night than Saturday had been, too -- lots of families out, and just more interaction and enthusiasm.

Lots of kids this time -- I must have played "Twinkle Twinkle" half a dozen times. At one point I was playing "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" for a little girl, and that attracted the attention of three little girls over on the far bench. I asked them if they wanted to sing along to "Let It Go". They did, and stood up by me to sing, but didn't actually sing at all. Fun for them anyway, I think.

Later on, a guy came by who made sure that anyone within earshot knew that he was "in a band" back home in Minnesota. I guess he figured that that gave him license to sing along loudly on every song. Unfortunately, I'm not a Karaoke machine and many of my songs aren't exactly like the original recordings that he was singing from, so he was off whack a lot. He asked about my harmony box, but then kept trying to sing harmony anyway, though he knew I already had the harmonies covered. It was pretty annoying to me, but maybe the people in front of my speaker were hearing me a lot louder than him. Let's go with that...

A young couple came by and danced to anything and everything. Then an older Latino couple came up and asked me if I knew anything with a Calypso beat. Not really sure -- I don't catalog them that way, so she settled for "Time After Time", which I'm pretty sure doesn't qualify as Calypso, but whatever, and they danced some pretty fancy dance school stuff to that and everything that came after. And then another couple joined in so I had quite a dance party going -- probably the longest one ever.

A Mexican family came by and I gave the little boy my "picture menu" of Kids' Songs, and he pointed at the Lion King picture. I had a feeling that he couldn't read English, and wasn't really asking for "Can You Feel the Love Tonight", but was expecting "Hakuna Matata" or "Just Can't Wait To Be King". I've had people ask for "... Love Tonight" before, and it's a pretty song and I do it well enough, but unless the mood is right, it tends to "clear the room". So this time, I ignored the kid and played "Kiss the Girl", "A Whole New World", and "Please, Mister Postman" which seemed OK with him and kept my crowd intact, thankyouverymuch.